1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a procedure generation apparatus and a procedure generation method.
2. Description of the Related Art
There has been known a technique of guiding work procedures in a routine work such as a general business process, in which a specific work flow is defined as a premise, and then, various work procedures according to the work flow or management of an examination and approval procedure following results of conducting the work are supported.
In a commercially-available work flow management system, for example, a unit of a work called a “task” or an “activity” in a business process is represented in a form of a block. A plurality of blocks are connected with arrowed lines, which represents an anteroposterior relationship in the process. If a problem resulting from conducting a work occurs in an examination and approval procedure, the process returns to a previous procedure. This can be represented by a loop or a conditional branching.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application, Publication No. 2004-126681 (paragraphs 0013 to 0032 and FIG. 1) discloses a method of easily changing a work flow. In the method, an existing work flow is broken into an activity or an input/output data, which is stored in a data table and is reconstructed as appropriate.
In a nonroutine work such as designing and development of a product, however, it is not always easy to define a specific work flow which is a premise in the conventional technique. This is because cause and effect relationships between procedures in the nonroutine work are often deeply intertwined or go around in circles. For example, a result of one procedure influences another, whose result then influences yet another which is present prior to the one procedure.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application, Publication No. 2004-126681 has an advantageous effect on a reduction in man-hours for modifying a work flow. However, the patent application cited above is used exclusively for a routine business process and can hardly adapt to a change of a start point or of an order of procedures depending on situations, which often occurs in procedures of a nonroutine work.
To solve the problems described above, the present invention has been made in an attempt to provide a procedure generation apparatus and a procedure generation method capable of guiding work procedures and reducing the number of man-hours for creating a work flow or conducting its maintenance, even in nonroutine work procedures in which a start point or an order of procedures changes, such as designing and development of a product.